Fond Memories of the PUCC

I have fond memories of the Computer Center. I worked from freshman year through graduation in "the Clinic" (aka PUCC aka Princeton University Computer Center Clinic) with fellow undergraduates under fulltime staff managers Liz, Verna, and Diane.

We served from a free walk-in clinic on the first floor. The upper floors were locked to mere mortals like me, as they were the domain of the deities ... uh, I mean the professional staff of the center ... folks like Lee and Malinda, Bob, I.T.C, and others. The basement held our two mainframes: the batch 360/91 and the timesharing 370/158.

Our job was to help users with a wide range of problems -- often related to JCL (Job Control Language) -- the somewhat arcane // and /* cards that surrounded one's program. Users would also ask for help debugging their FORTRAN (and other language) programs. The users were mainly faculty and grad students -- definitely hardcore nerds like us.

I recall falling asleep many times in the basement of the Computer Center waiting for my jobs to run, and waking up not knowing what time it was -- although sometimes other "regulars" would kindly place my printouts from the shared printer next to my sleeping body.

We occasionally have mini luncheon reunions, and if you are a clinic alum, select that on our PU online profile, and one of the organizers may reach out to you.